Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Work's been difficult the last few years, I've been uber inspired for the company to do great things but every time I suggest something I get excuses - or agreement but nothing comes of it. So begrudgingly, in a very "I told you so" manner, I started to do the hard yards myself (which has been really cool actually, it's lead to some interesting stuff), but ultimately I'm the little red hen when it comes to getting any help.

Then Jeff came into my life, albeit in the form of a $2 blog to book (best damn money I've ever spent). The gold nugget I found was that my approach sucked. I was turning my frustration against the team which I realised wasn't working but didn't see a way through. The trick, apparently, is to care about the people I work with and want to help them.

I do, for true, but I lost my way.

So yeah, this rings true for me. And it's something I don't need to fake.

Whether this gets the team pulling together or not's the next question, but first thing's first: sort myself out first before trying to sort out others.

Jeff states Boyd's Law of Iteration as "the speed of iteration beats quality of iteration" but I think the mechanism is more evolutionary than that - it's to make trial and error as fast and inexpensive as possible. I don't think quality has much to do with it.

Trial and error is a groping search, so it's relevant when the environment is dynamic or when the next move is unknown. This is life. As soon as we think we've arrived at our destination or solved all our problems, we'll stop moving and sink into the shifting sands.

In fact, I often hear the guiding question, “what problem are we trying to solve?” but I think this is not necessarily a good starting point. Apple aren’t solving any problems, they’re showing us goods and services we didn't know we wanted.

Let’s not be lead by market fit, let’s be misfits and lead the market.